As the public sector strikes hit Britain, where is Ed Miliband?

At PMQs yesterday, David Cameron took Ed Miliband to task for what he was not saying. After a long exchange over NHS quangos, Dave struck back: "You cannot ask about strikes because you are in the pocket of the unions!" And Ed said nothing. He's still saying nothing: one brief interview with Sky News this morning, but that's it. At the start of the biggest public sector strike in years, the leader of the Labour Party is as silent as the empty classrooms.

This is strange, because Ed is not actually "in the pocket of the unions" – not these unions, anyway. Neither the PCS or the two teachers' unions striking are Labour affiliated, meaning that they don't fill Labour's coffers. They are also clearly at odds with much of the rest of the trade union movement. As Francis Maude pointed out to Mark Serwotka (the head of the PCS) on Today, the stance of the PCS – that negotiations aren't worth having – is not what the bosses of the TUC and Unison, Brendan Barber and Dave Prentis, are saying. Today's strikes are nothing more than a Left-wing political stunt, and every one knows it. Ed certainly knows it – he told Sky News earlier that "when negotiations are still going on", it is wrong for unions to walk out.

So why isn't he shouting this from a loudhailer? If there is one idea that sticks in the public mind, it is that Ed is the unions' man. As a poll in today's Independent reveals, recognition of the Labour leader is so bad that fully a quarter of people think his name is David. The only image of Ed that has stuck at all is the one of him standing at a TUC podium on the March 30 rally in Hyde Park (as above). That day, Miliband's cosy honeymoon ended – it was a total disaster. Faced with the same again – an enormous display of Left-wing anger – Ed should be seizing the opportunity to differentiate himself from the fringes of his party by loudly condemning the strikers. If his brother were in power, you could be sure he'd be doing just that.

But the reason Ed won't do that is simple: curiously, he's actually quite a principled politician. And while he will say the right things about unions, welfare reform or anything else when pushed far enough, you get the sense he doesn't really believe it. Like so many young Left-wingers, he is still convinced that he can win from the Left, surfing into No 10 on an enormous progressive wave. But that's not going to happen. The socialist sea is as flat as a paddling pool. And if Ed doesn't realise it now, he never will.

UPDATE: To be fair to Ed, while I thought he was being quite timid, as this BBC story shows, he's already succeeded in annoying the strike-happy bits of his base. Unfortunately though, Ed hasn't won much airtime or credit for doing so. He's not so much leapt off the fence as fallen awkwardly off it, injuring himself on the way down.